Each year there comes that specific day in everyone’s life where they should feel special and celebrated – when they have to feel the importance of their existence. Birthday. However, each year that this day comes, I feel depressed, lonely, alone – with no one and nothing to celebrate. II hate my birthday as much as I love it. I love it because I have great parents and family who support me in every undertaking in life, they never faltered in pushing me gently to come face my limits. I hate it because there are those people who you expect to at least know that it is the day, your special day but still forget it. Well, I already am an adult and it looks so immature for me to rant about this but sometimes it kind of feels great to be important, even just once a year.

But it’s great that this year I decided to be the lowkey-est that I have ever been. Never mentioning my birthday to anyone and those who really knew it by heart, of course greeted me. My brothers, parents, aunts, some friends way back from high school took their time to message me or call me even if they are busy and I really appreciate their efforts.

It’s just a little bit bizarre that no one from my university classmates and friends even know that today was my special day, it kind of stings though.

Anyhow, I’m 19 – young but capable of handling these petty emotions that I am feeling right now. I can do this, I must do this even though it means I do it alone.

The day I decided to let you go was the day I started to realize who I really was, am, and will be. That me was never with you. That me was never for you. That me was always me, not you. That same day I decided to let go of my feelings was the day I started loving myself. Now here I am, stronger than before. Even stronger without you.

Up until now, you still haunt me, you are still in me. Cold, lifeless – that’s how you treat me now. You’re there, but now a ghost. The memories still haunt me, and I still wake up in the middle of the night thinking what happened to us, how did it happen to us.

It wasn’t always that clear why we met, why that chain message I sent you started what we had, the unlabeled something that somehow mattered to me. Why you also replied although it was clearly a ploy that amounted to nothing. Maybe I wanted you, err, I noticed you since that day in the pool – you looked at me like we knew each other, like you want me, like I was yours and you mine. I think it’s funny that you’ve admitted that it was the day you started noticing me too, isn’t it? But now all we had was gone, I can ask no more.

Maybe it already ended before it even started. Maybe it is really doomed to end from the very start. I guess destiny and fate are just great being the best and worst bitches that we can ever have.

I can’t quite look at you when we go out with friends to drinking sessions, and when we sing at Karaoke night, singing the songs we sang each other before. I can’t even quite imagine how we ended up this way, trying to just glance at each other, with talking eyes – screaming to please end this agony. I think we had this silent agreement to just let everything that happened between the two of us as private as we could, letting no one, not any person (even the closest to us) know because we know that it can destroy not only the two of us but a lot of people in the process. I think we will just continue to traverse this path – hurting each other just to protect the people we love.

It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t even close to complicated at all. It was more than that.

But know that you are loved, being loved, and I will always love you – no matter what.

It has been more than a year since the first time I got obsessed to you, to everything that is you. I was enchanted by your smirk, the little smile you make that no one can decipher the real meaning, whether you’re joking or just simply being weirdly cute. Your wits, your jokes, everything that is you. I can’t even fathom how I survived one whole year without you, your presence, your everything. And now, here we are again, back to where we started, however, it was different. We are now friends, and it can never be more than that now.

I was obsessed to you, your breath, your eyes, your soul, your mind, and to everything that is you.

It’s never really clear what has been going on between the two of us before we started tearing each other apart. We never really talked about what happened in the past, we just pretend it did not ever happen. We shrug it out of our conscious being but I know it bothers me, I hope I still bother you too. The history between the two of us is just too eventful to forget that easily, I can pretend, but I may never really forget you. The way you made me feel when we are “together”, the way your words slide through my consciousness as honey to the skin, I will never forget anything, not a thing at all.

Maybe time will come and I will not know your name anymore, maybe.

Maybe we will become “just” friends and not feel for each other anymore, maybe.

Just when I thought I already moved on, ready to be friends once more…and I realized I am writing here again.